Treyarch's recently-announced [app=8801]Black Ops 2[/app] has gone live with a bunch of new details and screens. The game, which has now appeared on Steam (albeit without a price), will pit players against a militarised version of the real-life Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), who in 2025 in Treyarch's fiction have access to their own special forces units. Activision have also released a bunch of hi-res screens, some of which you've seen before, some not. Click on through for the image gallery.

The game should still look like it was developed in the past 5 years. Those screenshots shown above look like something from 2005. The texture work in particular is just horrible. Good textures can make low poly models still look great. But when you have poop textures on low poly models.....well the game will look like the screenshots posted (a dogs turd in essence).

Not to mention that we all know how shallow CoD games are mechanic wise. They haven't evolved in the slightest since CoD 2. So really, when you pair poor graphics with poor, simple gameplay. I fail to understand how anyone can be hyped for the game.

But Activision have done it again because apparently Blops 2 pre-orders are already higher than MW3

Personally, I'm a gameplay first, visuals second kind of gamer. You're right, it is not all about graphics. But when your franchise has made billions of dollars, you think you could spare some pocket change to actually improve said graphics a little more.

To me, it shows a lack of respect to your audience and to the content. It's hard not to see what Activision are doing as cynical exploitation of their cash cow. They seem unwilling to invest anything but the bare minimum back into the improvement of their product. I can only imagine how frustrating it would be to work as an artist for Treyarch or IW these days - watching your colleagues in the industry playing - for years! - with differed lighting models, physics-based deformation, volumetric lighting, global illumination, normal maps, motionblur, displacement mapping, advanced animation systems - not to mention vastly higher textures and poly count capabilities...all the bells and whistles of a modern game engine that they do not get to use to improve the quality of their craft. To my knowledge, the IW engine has none of those features - and those are just off the top of my head.

Having said all that, I probably won't play BLOPS2 for the same reason I didn't play MW2, MW3 and BLOPS. They just didn't offer much at all above what MW had already delivered. Perhaps BLOPS2 will be different, but I'm thinking this is probably the same sort of wishful thinking that many of us have been burned by in the last few instalments of the series. I can think of more than one friend of mine who was pissed off spending $90 on what essentially feels like a reskin of a previous game. Maybe this will be the one to buck the trend - this one has robots(!!!!eleventy1!). I'm not totally writing it off - I'll give the reviews a read and try and judge it on its own merits, but we're talking about trying to teach new tricks to a very old dog here. Personally, it's once bitten, twice shy.

I'm a gameplay first, graphics last kinda guy, unlike everyone here who is a graphics w...appreciatist.

If gameplay is good, the game can last for years, if the graphics are good, it lasts for months.

See: Deus Ex vs CrysisBF3 isn't lasting long, now that companies have to have 'DLC' plans and cut content out now (good job ruining it for everyone, IDC whether it's on disk or not, why is it not with the game?)Mount and Blade is still lasting, as is Civ VStarcraft 2 is visuals first, gameplay wayyy behind (carbon copy of its predecessor with some features that the first one was strangely lacking that other RTS's weren't), it won't last too long... hopefully.

This one's at least trying to break the mold, and mould, that the series has accumulated over the years. I think that what they're doing here, instead of trying to improve upon graphics, which previously has been the big hook, along with plotline, is improve upon the setting and feel. I'm calling it right now, this will try very hard to make you feel like you're in a futuristic warzone, with overly dramatic orchestral noises, lots of dust and particle effects, and bad voice acting. They're going to shoot for aesthetics, and miss completely.

Rayman: Origins, while not exactly graphically pleasing, was visually pleasing, but only because the graphics fit the aesthetics. This does not fit the aesthetics, the scene demands a higher level of immersion than these poor polygons and textures can provide. There's going to be near no gameplay changes, and I'm expecting month 2 DLC, that provides a new gamemode, mini-campaign, a new UI overhaul, 4 new weapons, 10 new perks, 3 new maps, and a new vehicle. Oh, except it'll probably be the standard 4 map, 3 weapon fare that they're used to churning out.

I think that if they went the way of the Dota 2 beta, and had a beta long before release, and an active dev forum, where people can post their impressions and their gripes long before release, they could really improve the game, and actually have a half decent release. Hell, they could do it the CoD way, and bundle it with the next batch of DLC. 3 new maps, and an exclusive pass to the CoD: 13: Modern Warfare 3: Black Ops 2 Beta. Actually, rereading what I just wrote, that's a terrible idea. They want to get new people into their game, because it's obvious that they'll get the 12 year olds money either way. Make it an open beta, available on Steam for 1 week, then cut access to the people that aren't contributing to the forums. I don't know, they can figure it out. The point is, that the series is dying. They need to step up their game, and try and improve the game as a whole, instead of focusing on the story, or aesthetics, or whatever.

ryceg wrote:...I think that what they're doing here, instead of trying to improve upon graphics, which previously has been the big hook, along with plotline, is improve upon the setting and feel...Rayman: Origins, while not exactly graphically pleasing, was visually pleasing, but only because the graphics fit the aesthetics. This does not fit the aesthetics, the scene demands a higher level of immersion than these poor polygons and textures can provide.

Well put. I have no problem with the futuristic setting and it's nice to see them trying something new, but if it is purely a change of timeline with no innovation in gameplay whatsoever, then it is simply painting poop red and trying to resell it again.